Ann Keen: The hon. Gentleman raises some serious issues. A joint letter in my name and that of my Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), was laid before this House outlining the professional's duty of care in child protection, the legal framework in which professionals operate and the basis on which sound professional judgments should be made, fully recognising the role of doctors as vital to the safeguarding of children's welfare.

John Spellar: I congratulate the Secretary of State on taking action against the disgracefully high pay-outs made to incompetent bureaucrats in the health service, but does not that reveal the further scandal that many of those who have received those payouts are able to slip into other highly paid jobs elsewhere in the NHS? Will my right hon. Friend consult with hon. Members of all parties to determine the extent to which that is happening, and put a stop to it?

Alan Johnson: My right hon. Friend raises a point that will be echoed by hon. Members around the Chamber. The hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott) is not currently in his place, but I can tell the House that he has also been extremely helpful on these matters. We have to put an end to the culture that my right hon. Friend has described, not least because we must protect the integrity of those senior managers who never benefit from such pay-outs. Where a person's conduct has been unsatisfactory, we must ensure that he or she does not receive an inappropriate payment or receive a glowing reference that may lead to reappointment in a health trust somewhere else. That is another element of the guidance that we have issued.

Hilary Benn: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement on last week's international climate change negotiations in Indonesia.
	The Minister for the Environment and I attended the 13th conference of the parties to the United Nations framework convention on climate change and the third meeting of the parties to the Kyoto protocol, in Bali. After intensive, and at times difficult, talks we reached an historic agreement in which for the first time all the countries of the world agreed to start negotiations on a new climate deal for implementation after the Kyoto protocol's first commitment period ends in 2012. These negotiations will begin next year and will be concluded in Copenhagen in 2009.
	The Bali action plan represents the most significant collective agreement to protect the world from dangerous climate change since the Kyoto protocol was signed exactly 10 years ago. It recognises the need for deep cuts in global emissions as set out in the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. In addition, in the ad hoc working group—or AWG—on further commitments for annex 1 parties under the Kyoto protocol, which forms part of what we agreed, we recognised the need for global emissions to be reduced by at least 50 per cent. by 2050 compared with 1990 levels, and for developed countries to reduce their emissions by 25 to 40 per cent. by 2020.
	The Bali action plan commits developed and developing countries over the next two years to negotiate a long-term global goal for emission reductions, and to agree measurable, reportable and verifiable national and international action to mitigate climate change by all countries, including commitments to emission limitation and reduction objectives by developed countries. The action plan will bear in mind the different national economic and social circumstances of developed and developing countries, in line with the United Nations framework convention on climate change—or UNFCCC—principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Negotiations will take place in an ad hoc working group on long-term co-operative action under the convention and four meetings will take place next year.
	In addition to the action plan, Bali resulted in some significant breakthroughs on technology transfer, deforestation, adaptation and carbon markets, which will begin almost immediately. On technology, there was agreement on an ambitious work programme covering both mitigation and adaptation. A UNFCCC expert group will examine ways and means of speeding up technology development and transfer, and its funding.
	On deforestation, which, as the House will be aware, is responsible for about 20 per cent. of global emissions, the agreement in Bali will pave the way for incentives to reduce those emissions, and those will cover both wholesale deforestation and more gradual damage. The agreement will set the rules for projects that can be piloted to common UN-approved guidelines, so that what is learned can feed into a future climate framework. I announced a UK contribution of £15 million to the World Bank forest carbon partnership facility, which will assist countries to try out that new approach.
	A decision was also reached on the governance of the adaptation fund, which will support developing countries to adapt to the climate change that is already inevitable. That will be funded by a 2 per cent. levy on the clean development mechanism.
	On carbon markets, it was agreed to abolish registration fees and levies on clean development mechanism projects in the least developed countries, and to approve the use of non-renewable biomass CDM, which means that projects such as encouraging small cooking stoves will now be possible through the CDM. Changes were also agreed to improve the way in which the CDM and the CDM board function, and the UK announced the Africa Springboard project, in which we will work with 10 UK financial institutions to try to increase the number of CDM projects in Africa.
	The success of the Bali conference was, I think, made both possible and necessary by the compelling clarity of the science contained in the recent intergovernmental panel on climate change report, by the strength of the economic case for urgent action set out in Nick Stern's findings, and by the way in which our changing climate is changing our politics. I pay particular tribute to the leadership of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, to the President and Government of Indonesia, to Portugal as the EU presidency, and to the recognition by every delegation that we could not let the next generation down. I also personally thank officials from across the UK Government and from the embassy in Jakarta for their extraordinary knowledge, dedication and commitment.
	This agreement represents a successful outcome to extensive lobbying by the UK and the EU over the past 12 months, building on the results of G8 summits and other meetings. It very much reflects the elements of a future framework agreed by EU Heads of Government earlier this year. The hardest stage, however, begins now, and we will of course play our full part over the next two years in seeking to reach a global climate deal that will take us beyond 2012. However, without what has been agreed in Bali, there would be no negotiations and no possibility of a deal. That is the real significance of what the world resolved to do in Bali last week.

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he has said, and for his welcome for what was agreed in Bali. Of course we will need binding commitments, which is why the UK has made them, as have a number of other countries. It is inconceivable that we will deal with this problem if the largest economy in the world does not come on board. The politics is changing, including in the United States of America, as the hon. Gentleman knows: we can look at what is happening in California and Florida, and in the east coast states which will introduce an emissions trading scheme for the power sector next year, and at the Bill that has been before Congress. Different countries are at different stages of understanding and commitment on climate change. The significance of this agreement—this is why I stick with my description of it as historic—is that for the very first time every country in the world, including the United States of America, has signed up to a negotiation that recognises in its overarching document the need for deep cuts in emissions.
	On deforestation, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that the incentives must be changed. The forest carbon partnership facility will help to pilot ways of counting, verifying and reporting what the baseline is for the state of forestation, which will make it possible to record whether the rate of deforestation has been reduced so that we can then allow the carbon market to support that.
	I can look the hon. Gentleman in the eye and say that there is no truth whatever in the suggestion made in one newspaper. I am sure that he did not really think that there was. The House will be shocked to learn that not everything that is reported in our newspapers is necessarily true. We stuck foursquare with the EU position on that, and he will see a reference to the 25 to 40 per cent. figure in the AWG report.
	We will indeed have to change the way we produce our energy. The announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform on renewables offers a good example of that. I look forward to working with everybody concerned as we discuss the Climate Change Bill, to make sure that it is as effective as possible.
	It is true that we were unable to make progress on including aviation in the Bali discussions, and I simply say to the House that we will have to return to that. However, on Thursday of this week we will discuss the inclusion of aviation in the EU emissions trading scheme. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the UK has been in the forefront in Europe in pressing for that, and for the earliest possible start date—I do not know what we will get as a result of that discussion—and for the baseline for emissions to be the 2004-06 level, which means that any further growth in emissions must be either constrained within the aviation sector or offset by emission reductions elsewhere. That is why inclusion in the ETS is so important.
	The hon. Gentleman is right about carbon capture and storage, and the generation of power by coal. China is building one coal-fired power station a week. That is why steps such as the investment we are making in a post-combustion pilot project here in the UK, the EU NZEC—near-zero emissions from coal—project that we are supporting in China, and our willingness to work with the Government of India on carbon capture and storage, are so important, because if we cannot perfect this technology and apply it, retrofitting it to existing plants and building it into new plants, we will have little prospect of meeting the targets that the world will have to set as a result of this negotiation.
	In conclusion, let me say that I genuinely look forward to working with all Members in this House and all Governments around the world as we take forward the agreement that we reached in Bali this week and get on with the tough task ahead. I acknowledge what the hon. Gentleman said about it being a tough task, but at least we now have a means of achieving that deal, which we did not have a week ago.

Colin Challen: Demonising the United States is a great game, but the vast majority of the Kyoto protocol's annexe 1 countries have failed miserably to meet their commitments under that 1997 agreement. There are one or two noble exceptions—sometimes that is the case more by accident than design—but the vast majority of countries fail to reach their targets. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, for the UK to pursue its leading role in this, a national dialogue, initiated by the Government, should take place over these two years so that we can properly address the questions that have been raised about our commitment, particularly on things such as aviation and new fossil-fuel power stations, and make an active contribution during the two-year process?

Hilary Benn: I missed that— [ Interruption. ] Yes, well that illustrates the point that I made a moment ago. I grant the hon. Gentleman that there is a certain irony in it, but the only way to get the deal was to get everybody in the same place and Indonesia was hosting the negotiations. Wherever it was, people would have had to come from other parts of the world. It was a price worth paying for the deal that we got.
	Secondly, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that as countries are able to demonstrate that it is possible for their economies to continue to grow, but sustainably, that will begin to undermine his argument. As I said, our own modest example in the UK over the last decade has demonstrated that we can begin to decouple the two. When that can be demonstrated, the way in which developing countries look at what they need to do will change, because they will realise that it is possible to get the economic growth that they want—to get their kids into school, to provide the electricity and to improve health care—and, at the same time, to make a contribution to ensuring that dangerous climate change does not in the end overwhelm them. India, for example, will have another 500 million to 600 million citizens in the next 40 years. They will have to be fed, but climate change could reduce crop yields, and there will be a shortage of water. That is not a very appealing prospect for any Government.

Robert Smith: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government may regret not having made a formal statement, in which she could have addressed directly some of the questions raised by the hon. Lady. Today's debate is a timely opportunity for us to get things on the record.
	I want to concentrate on the fact that there are several matters before the House and in the hands of Government that are affecting access to services for constituents in rural areas. There is a need to maintain the life of rural communities and to maintain their engagement. We are in the middle of the consultation on the closure of 2,500 post offices. It is depressing that the Government seem to have come at the issue with a top-down attitude, looking at how many post offices they can afford to close, rather than at what kind of network is needed to deliver the criteria that they have set for the Post Office. The approach should have been much more bottom-up, based on the community's needs. The Government should have worked out those needs and then built up to the kind of network that was needed to fulfil them, rather than coming up with a figure of 2,500 at the start of the process. The feedback from the Post Office is that if any individual campaign makes during the consultation an effective case for the non-closure of a post office, the Post Office will have to find another post office to close to make up the numbers. That means that the feedback from communities will not be as effective as it would be if a community-up approach were adopted.
	In the north-east, there will be a month's delay before the community will know what will happen. It was meant to be April, but it is now going to be May before we know the Post Office's decision. Between now and then, we must continue to convey that there is a danger in building the model on to the urban reinvention model. The idea was that if one post office was closed, people would go to neighbouring post offices. In rural areas, where communication links are much more radial, there is a danger of falsely assuming that the closure of one post office will mean that the nearest post office benefits. The modelling will have to be far more effective in understanding how people in communities travel, where their nearest post offices are, and how many people are going to be excluded from access to those post offices.
	The recent loss of child benefit data is a reminder of the value many people attach to using the post office as a safe and reliable means of handling their finances. The card account is a simple system. One cannot go overdrawn or put one's finances at risk. In a situation where people cannot trust the Government with their data, the Post Office card account is a safer choice, because there is no risk of any fraud being perpetrated.
	The Government keep talking about how natural forces and a change in the market are driving the situation with the Post Office. One of the biggest customers, the Department for Work and Pensions, forcibly drove through far too fast the change in how payments are made. The Government have to accept that they pushed people faster than they were naturally willing to go when it came to changing the system and that they put pressure on the Post Office to adapt far too quickly. Now they are having to pick up the pieces through the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, which is trying to sort out the Post Office.
	The roll-out of broadband can engage rural communities and avoid a drift into cities. Many constituents finally have access to broadband, but parts of those communities do not get broadband at even the most basic speeds. However, many service providers produce sale pitches that offer broadband at much higher speeds than can be achieved on the ground. We need clearer marketing of broadband so that people get the speed of broadband for which they are paying, rather than an aspiration.
	We also need to learn lessons from the first phase of getting broadband out. There is already talk of the next generation of much faster broadband. When Ofcom takes decisions on technology and the way in which it wants to operate the market, it needs to be mindful of how the service will be connected to rural areas. If it comes up with a model that can be rolled out really quickly in the cities, but that makes it even more difficult for social schemes to ensure that the technology reaches deep into rural areas, we will lose out again. Such technology should reinvigorate rural communities by enabling people to work from home, which would reduce the impact on the climate caused by commuting to work. However, if the progress in urban areas is much faster than that elsewhere, the drive towards people having to leave rural areas will increase. People who are involved in the oil and gas industry in the north-east of Scotland deal with large amounts of data. If such people are able to work from home, it will be a real bonus. However, that will require fast-speed broadband to reach their homes at the same time that it reaches urban areas.
	Another change in technology affecting rural areas will be the switch-off of analogue television—that will happen in my area in 2010—which will lead to a total reliance on digital TV. We are beginning to hear assurances that when the power on the digital signal is turned up, it should be able to reach most homes, and that side of the technology is becoming more understood. However, it is important that rural communities have the chance to be part of the shared culture of digital television and to access information.
	Some people are at risk of being excluded from the transition. People are already buying new equipment—if they are changing their television, they should be aware of their needs and how best to access digital TV—yet the help scheme kicks in only six months before the switchover. There should be a longer lead-in time during which vulnerable people can be assisted with the transition.
	A particular group of vulnerable people who are missing out is those who are registered blind, those with poor eyesight, and those with dyslexia. The bonus of digital television for them will be audio description, which will mean that if they are watching a complex programme and cannot quite work out what is happening, they will be able to switch on the audio description to get the added benefit of finding out how many characters are on screen and what is involved in the development of the plot. Such technology will engage people with sight problems in TV in a way that cannot be achieved through the existing analogue system. However, there is concern that the aspiration for audio description is very low. Only 10 per cent. of public service broadcasting has to have audio description, so we need to drive that forward more quickly and effectively.
	With regard to access, I am worried about the speed with which the Government are pressing ahead. Anyone who has switched to digital TV will know that the multitude of available channels are accessed by reading an on-screen guide. Clearly, such a guide is of no use to someone with sight problems or dyslexia, yet with multi-channel provision, there is no other way of working out the channels. On many handsets, the correct buttons to press are unclear, especially if one has difficulty with contrast; for example, many of the numbers might be very small. The Government need to press ahead quickly on ensuring that the talking programme guide is developed and running. If someone's TV were to break down now, it would be madness for them to buy an old-fashioned TV—they should adapt their technology in the run-up to the switch-off. There should not be reliance on the six months before switch-off.
	Although the Met Office says that this winter will be warmer than normal, it will be colder than the past couple of winters that we have experienced. It certainly feels colder at the moment than it has been for some time. That will remind all hon. Members of those who are struggling to heat their homes and the fact that the winter fuel payment has not kept up with the rise in fuel prices. Three factors affect a person's ability to heat their home: their income; the price of the fuel that they use to heat the home; and the quality of the home's insulation. The Government tackled fuel poverty, in the early stages of the market, by relying on bringing down the price of fuel. Of course, prices have now gone back up, and although they have eased off a little this year, they are on an upward trend. If people are to be able to heat their homes effectively and to make sure that the money that they spend on heating is not wasted, we will need to drive forward much more effectively an improvement in the quality of homes and their insulation.
	There is an added disconnect in rural areas. While the price of gas, and thus the price of electricity, have remained relatively stable this winter, the price of oil, which is the main option for heating homes that are not on the gas network, has shot up dramatically. If we are to tackle fuel poverty throughout the country, we will need to recognise that those who are not on the gas main are missing out yet again on something that is available to the vast majority of society.
	The plans involving the regulator to try to extend the gas network to fuel-poor areas will have a marginal benefit. However, when the Government consider support for the fuel-poor, they need to address those who are not, and are never likely to be, on the gas main and who thus face more volatile fuel prices and unstable markets. To that end, I urge the Government to examine alternative ways of heating homes, such as heat pumps and microgeneration technologies, that are more fuel-efficient and thus not as affected as oil by fluctuations in fuel prices.
	At this point I should declare my interest in the oil and gas industry. I am a shareholder in Shell and vice-chair of the all-party group on the offshore oil and gas industry, which is supported by Oil and Gas UK. On the other side of the energy equation, a lot of my constituents' jobs depend on the health of the North sea oil and gas industry, which is going through a period of transition. On the face of it, given that world oil prices are booming, it is a dynamic industry, but there are a lot of concerns underneath the surface. The Health and Safety Executive recently highlighted concern about structural maintenance and, if that is not addressed, the risk of a major incident. A lot of the equipment is reaching the end of its original design life, so a culture of adequate investment is needed to ensure the continuity of that equipment.
	While the effective improvement to the human side of safety has been a success, there is a worry that if the investment culture is not right, another major incident could occur. That is a reminder of one of the challenges for the North sea, even with the high oil price. The situation surrounding the supply of skills and equipment throughout the world is becoming much more difficult, and competition for investment is becoming more challenging as larger, less mature fields in other parts of the world start to suck away investment. Costs are thus rising in the North sea.
	Both the Government and the industry welcome the constructive engagement on changing the relationship between the Treasury and the industry. Historically, the Treasury, under both the Conservative and Labour parties, has viewed the industry as a short-term means of dealing with a cash-flow crisis in the Government's coffers, without thinking of the long-term structural investment needs. Although the Treasury has taken a more constructive approach to some of the issues affecting the industry, it still needs to look at maximising the return from the North sea by reducing its take from the North sea so that we can see long-term benefits. Such benefits would include not only the retention of more jobs in the north-east of Scotland and places throughout the country that depend on the investment, but increased security of supply through the establishment of new sources of gas, given that there is much gas that can be found there, although only with the right investment climate. If we were to get that right, we could ensure that the Government's future tax revenues were far greater.
	Those are the issues that I wanted to raise on behalf of my constituency in the Christmas recess adjournment debate. On the business of the House, I hope that in the new year the Leader of the House will be able to give us business at least two weeks ahead. When we began to programme legislation and began reforms to the House, part of the trade-off offered by previous Leaders of the House was that there would be more predictability and more information on what was coming before Parliament, to enable people to plan ahead. That was for the benefit of Members of Parliament and, more importantly, outsiders. We must remember them. If Parliament is to engage with the outside world, we need to give those outside time to realise what is happening here, so that they can influence us before we make our decisions. I hope that in the new year there will be the resolve to get back to the cycle of two weeks' business being announced in business questions, so that the House can do a bit more planning. Obviously, as we progress, there can be a more clear-cut, longer-term view of how legislation will pan out.
	Finally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I wish a merry Christmas to you and all the staff of the House who make it possible for us to function. I wish all Members of the House a happy new year and a prosperous 2008.

Joan Ryan: I am grateful for this opportunity to raise a matter of huge importance to my constituents. It is probably the most important issue in my constituency, and has been for a considerable time. It is the future of Chase Farm hospital, which is in my constituency but which also serves surrounding constituencies. It has been an issue for between 15 and 20 years, so it is of long standing. It has not been helpful for the hospital; it has created huge instability. It is no exaggeration to say that there has been a significant loss of confidence in the NHS, and certainly in acute services, among local people.
	My commitment in 1997—the future of the hospital was an issue even back then—was that I would do everything that I could to ensure that Chase Farm hospital had a future as a fully functioning hospital. By that, I meant that the hospital would have in-patient and out-patient provision, and surgeons and physicians. Babies could be born there, and there would be accident and emergency provision. I will not look back over the whole period, because undoubtedly the 12 minutes available to me in no way allows that, but I want to go back to July 2003, when Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust announced a "healthy hospitals" public engagement. "Public engagement" was never really defined, although we have had a number of them. They have varied considerably, but did not seem to involve much effort by local NHS bureaucrats, either in the hospital trust or in the primary care trust, to engage with the maximum number of constituents across my borough and the two neighbouring boroughs effected, Haringey and Barnet. A little part of Cheshunt is also affected.
	Any public engagement that has taken place has been organised mainly by local Members of Parliament. At various times, members of the hospital trust or the PCT boards have attended. They have made some contribution at such meetings, but I am sorry to say that it has generally been a very unhelpful, ill-informed contribution. After the 2003 public engagement, a formal consultation document was to be produced. It was not produced—fortunately so, as the public engagement had been remarkably unsuccessful—because the sector-wide "healthy start, healthy futures" initiative did not proceed.
	There were then two failed attempts to restart the consultation process, and in October 2005 there was another public engagement. That happened and provided any engagement with the public only because the three Enfield Members of Parliament organised a series of public meetings. Otherwise, I am not sure that there would have been any event that one could have pointed to and said, "This is a public engagement."
	We were then confronted with five options for consultation, two of which were highlighted as preferred options. Three of them were declared not viable by the medical director of the trust, who had put the options before us. That beggars belief: why put three options before us that the medical director considered not viable? That was followed by the chief executive being quoted in the local newspaper as expressing her opinion on her preferred options, and reiterating that other options were not viable. That came across to local people as a fiasco. They felt that situation was a stitch-up, that one of the options would definitely become the way forward, and that what took place was not a public engagement, and certainly not a consultation, but was just lip-service. At no point have we been told exactly what a public engagement or consultation should involve, but it is everybody's understanding that the views of the local community are supposed to be taken into account. I think that it is becoming clear why there is a significant loss of confidence.
	At the end of the public engagement, it was clear that what the hospital trust wanted was a hot-cold solution. Barnet and North Middlesex University hospitals would be "hot" hospitals, becoming major trauma centres, with all accident and emergency work going there. Chase Farm would be a "cold" hospital, with all elective surgery. We want elective surgery at Chase Farm hospital, but we also want some accident and emergency provision, and we want it to be possible for Enfield babies to be born there.
	Following the public engagement, we were to have a consultation. On 3 December 2005, 5,000 people in Enfield turned out to march on a cold, windy Saturday afternoon. That is a significant turnout for quite a small town. They linked hands around the hospital. There were numerous petitions opposing the hot-cold solution, one of which had 18,000 signatures. The local medical committee—our general practitioners—opposed that hot-cold solution, and felt that the public engagement had been completely inappropriate, and that the public's need for access to the engagement had not been met. The chief executive of North Middlesex University hospital made it clear that she had significant problems with the proposals, and that if they went ahead, they would cause real problems for the accident and emergency departments at North Middlesex University and Barnet hospitals. The proposed expansion of North Middlesex University hospital would need to be looked at all over again.
	It transpired that there was no feasibility study underpinning the options, so a feasibility study was started. We cannot expect the public to have any confidence in a proposal that is brought forward with no notion of its financial viability, as was the case in this instance. I am pleased to say that in January 2006, options for formal consultation were delayed. There had been a public engagement and another set of options, but again there was to be no formal consultation. I am sure that hon. Members will be aware that there is a significant cost to such public engagements or possible consultations.
	In January 2006, there was what was called a pause for thought. I was pleased to have that pause, which was due to the helpful intervention of my noble Friend Baroness Wall, who had become the chair of Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust; I am pleased that she did—she brought some common sense to the situation. The pause for thought was to be until May. In February and March that year, I met the Secretary of State for Health. Numerous other lobbying activities were going on, and people were trying to put forward a sensible position on Enfield heath care services.
	In May 2006, no document was brought forward. We then discovered the existence of something called the project board. In September 2006, the project board brought forward 10 high-level scenarios. In October, it shortlisted four. If the House is beginning to lose the thread, I am not in the least bit surprised. Hon. Members can only imagine how local people felt.
	Then came a report from the clinical, public and patient engagement groups. Nobody really knew what they were. It seemed to be something of an exclusive process to which most of the public had been given no access. At that point, the Healthcare Commission published a report that classified Barnet and Chase Farm hospital trust as one of only eight acute hospital trusts in the country that were weak in resources and some areas of service quality. That rating reflected the trust's weak financial management, and so it is clear that we had gone from having no feasibility study to underpin proposals to having proposals based on information obtained from mismanaged finances. Confidence was totally eroded by that stage. We had had numerous other problems at the hospital. There were clearly serious management problems; we had three chief executives in some seven years.
	We have since had a further formal consultation, and we have had the help of Professor Sir George Alberti, who was very helpful. He said that only over his dead body would the hospital close—closure was one option. I thought that that was rather a risky statement, given what had gone on so far. He also said that we needed some accident and emergency provision at the hospital. I sent out 30,000 letters during that consultation to help people to understand what was being proposed. We were willing to compromise. We were not saying that we wanted no change, but we said we wanted option 1, which was a hospital with all its elective surgery, some accident and emergency provision and a midwife-led birthing unit. We requested doctor-led, 24-hour local accident and emergency provision in line with what Lord Darzi recommends for a local hospital. We have just had the results, and option 1 is the approach that will be taken, but we have been given only 12 hours of local accident and emergency cover. That is not sufficient.
	Will the Deputy Leader of the House ask Ministers in the Department of Health and anyone else who can have any impact on that decision to look at it very carefully? The people of Enfield have made it clear that they will work with local health authorities and Government and that they will accept some change, but we will not accept no accident and emergency provision during the 12 hours of the night. No cover is not acceptable—

Angela Browning: The Christmas pantomime at the Northcott theatre in Exeter this year is "Cinderella". We can all predict that it will have a happy ending and Cinderella will marry her prince. However, the outcome for the theatre is much more serious. We have recently heard that Arts Council England intends to withdraw all its annual funding of some £547,000 a year. If that is withdrawn, it is almost certain that the theatre will close.
	My next-door neighbour, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw)—the Minister of State, Department of Health—has set out clearly the reasons why, in his words, Arts Council England has made a most perverse decision. I agree, because although the theatre is on the campus of the university of Exeter, it is valued by the wider part of Devon, particularly eastern and mid-Devon, which I represent. I spoke only this morning to a theatre critic from the west country who has described the work of the Northcott theatre over the years as of quality. The performances at the Northcott are of a high quality.
	The reason why the hon. Member for Exeter described the decision as perverse is that we have all been invited to a launch of the newly refurbished Northcott theatre in January—£2.1 million has just been spent on refurbishing it, of which Arts Council England contributed £100,000. It continued to pay more than £500,000 in revenue costs while the theatre was closed for refurbishment. Exeter city council, Devon county council, the university and private funders managed to raise £2.1 million to refurbish the theatre on the basis that Arts Council England supported and expressed confidence in the future of the Northcott.
	It would be remiss of me, on behalf of my neighbour the hon. Member for Exeter and other Devon MPs, not to draw the House's attention to a decision that he has rightly described as perverse. In that part of Devon, we value the quality of work at the Northcott. It is well attended, with 80 per cent. attendance, which is very good for a provincial theatre. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will pass on to the relevant Minister the fact that opposition to Arts Council England's decision has cross-party support in Devon. We stand shoulder to shoulder and will oppose the decision, because the loss of the Northcott would be a severe blow to the people of Devon.
	I shall now move on to the subject of drugs. In certain cases, people have serious medical conditions and health care professionals believe that they should have access to drugs, but for one reason or another they are either denied access or, again rather perversely, even prevented from making some contribution, if they so choose, to help to pay for the drug.
	I recently had a case in Devon where a young mum had a severe but rare condition. The difference in cost between the drug that she was allowed and the drug that her consultant in London prescribed—the condition is so rare that her case is overseen by a London consultant—was £6,000 a year. Although she was turned down on appeal by doctors who clearly could not have had any knowledge of the complexity of her condition, I took the matter up with the chief executive of our primary care trust and I am pleased to say that she has now been allowed the drug that her consultant prescribed. MPs and other such people should not be the only route to obtain drugs that health care professionals believe necessary.
	We have seen in the press only this week the rather bizarre situation in which people who pay a proportion of their costs when they have a life-threatening or severe condition are then denied any access to the rest of their treatment on the NHS. That cannot be the fairness and justice that the Government talked about when they came to office in 1997.
	I am sure that the House will want to return to the subject. I shall certainly shall, not least—as hon. Members who, like me, represent English seats will know—because of the battle to get Lucentis prescribed for our constituents with wet-eye age-related macular degeneration. I notice that the Prime Minister was asked about that point a week or so ago at Prime Minister's questions. Ironically, the Prime Minister will not have the sort of postbag about this that I do, because his constituents in Scotland get the drug; mine go blind. In the interests of fairness and justice, I ask the Deputy Leader of the House: what is the point of research companies that produce wonderful, ground-breaking drugs that make such a difference to people's lives if people in this country cannot afford them? Health care professionals say that those drugs are the help that people need, but, perversely, they cannot be obtained even if people are prepared to contribute some of their hard-earned money to help to pay for them. There is something seriously wrong with drugs prescribing in this country. I ask the Deputy Leader of the House to look into that.
	Finally, I want to come to a point that I hope to bring back to the House in the new year. However, I must ask for the help of the Deputy Leader of the House. I wrote to the Minister for Housing, who is responsible for home information packs, on 19 October on behalf of my constituent, Mr. Dyke of Dunkeswell, who is aware that I shall raise the matter today. Mr. Dyke owns the kind of property that will be familiar to people who understand Devon architecture: a Devon longhouse. They are very old, very beautiful houses. This particular one was built in about 1500. He wanted to put his property on the market. Of course, since 1500 significant alterations and improvements have been made, including some to the thatched roof, and an additional part has been added to the building.
	I do not think that any of us would oppose energy certificates in principle, although my party rightly opposes the whole of the home information packs operation. When the energy inspector arrived at Mr. Dyke's house, he spent 15 minutes inspecting the property and asked no questions whatever of the home owner. Mr. Dyke was worried about that, because it is a complex building, and he volunteered certain information to the inspector and even walked him round, pointing out things that the inspector might have missed. The inspector made one or two notes and went away.
	The property contains a solid fuel Rayburn, a Nouvelle Heatranger. On receiving the inspector's report, and finding that he had received an F category energy certificate, my constituent was sure that the inspector had not taken account of the real fabric of the improvements that had been made to the property. Mr. Dyke obtained a copy of the assessors handbook produced for people carrying out such inspections, and—lo and behold—solid fuel boilers and heaters were not listed. Only gas and oil heaters were mentioned. Nor, for that matter, was there any mention of a building material with which we in Devon are very familiar: a substance called cob, which has quite beneficial insulation properties. I do not have time to go through the whole list of omissions.
	My constituent has rightly described this situation as a farce. In the end, he had to ask for someone with more experience to come out and do the whole inspection again. So someone who until recently had been a chiropractor turned up to look at the construction of Mr. Dyke's house. In the list of recommendations subsequently produced, my constituent was advised to fit a heating programmer, despite the fact that the system already had one. He was also advised that thermostatic radiator valves should be fitted, even though every radiator already had one. He was told that the hot water tank had no thermostatic regulator, although there was one. The list went on and on.
	My constituent wants to sell his property, which is not unnatural, yet he is still being plagued by bureaucracy and inefficiency in what he has described as a farce. I wrote to the Minister for Housing about this in October, and I have sent her chasing letters since then. I have still not had the courtesy of a reply. Given Mr. Dyke's experience, it appears that the people who are given the task of carrying out these inspections are not qualified or experienced enough to deal with older properties, but are trained to deal only with modern construction methods. I live in a house built in the 1600s made of wattle and daub—and I do not suppose that wattle and daub appear anywhere on the list of building materials that the Government deem it necessary to inspect.
	Even worse is the way in which the Government have set up these certificates, with an inspection matrix that allows certain tick boxes and not others, obviously not taking account of the diversity of property construction, especially in parts of the country such as Devon, with a great mixture of old traditional properties containing a wide range of building insulation and materials. The Government really must intervene on this issue, and I would like the Minister to respond to this point.
	My constituent Mr. Dyke has spent a lot of money improving the insulation and energy efficiency of his very old property. No one who has looked at it so far has been capable of giving the building a true assessment. It is outrageous that such people should have to undergo all this additional stress, anxiety and bureaucracy when they want to do something as simple and straightforward as selling their home.

Keith Vaz: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning). She usually ends such speeches by inviting hon. Members to visit her constituency during the recess, although I am not sure what she would want us to look at. Perhaps it would be Mr. and Mrs. Dyke's central heating, or the theatre that is about to close down. I shall have to give it a miss on this occasion. One place that I shall not be visiting is Cheshire, and certainly not in the company of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, for fear of what my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) might do to us if we were to arrive together.
	I have only a few points to make in this Christmas Adjournment debate: two are local issues, and two are of national interest. The first is a matter that has already been raised by the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith)—the closure of post offices. He gave a good account of the closure programme, which will also affect my constituency. There have been 52 post office closures in Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire, and one that I am particularly worried out is the post office at Willow Brook road and Bushby road.
	I went to that post office last Friday to accept a petition from Mr. Shah and the local residents, which I will present to the House at 7 o'clock tonight. I hope that hon. Members will want to stay for the presentation of the petition. In it, local residents express their grave concern about what might happen to local facilities if the Willow Brook Road post office closes. A lot of elderly people use that post office, as well as a lot of lone parents, and mothers who cannot go into Leicester city centre to access postal services. This post office is of vital importance to the local community.
	I know that all hon. Members can make a case for keeping their local post offices open, but I want to ask the Minister to make a special plea, through her good offices, to the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden) to re-examine the case. I invite him to come to Leicester over the Christmas recess—Wolverhampton is not that far from Leicester—to visit Mr. Shah and the local residents and to hear for himself their real concerns about these proposals. I have faith in the system, and I know that we have Postwatch, but I am worried because every time we have written to Postwatch or the Government about a post office closure, the closure has still taken place. On this occasion, I hope that the Minister will come to my constituency.
	The second point that I want to raise relates to a site at the junction of the A46 and the A6—the road that leads from Leicester to Nottingham. It is a large landmark site that has been occupied for more than 60 years by GE-Thorn. One in every two light bulbs in Europe were once made on the site. A decision was made last year to close GE in Leicester, after it had operated there for more than half a century, resulting in more than 400 employees being made redundant. At the time, the local people accepted that the proposed redundancy package was quite impressive, and although they wanted to keep their jobs, they were happy to go along with the package on offer.
	My concern relates to the fact that the site has remained empty, and that GE has no plans to market it. It is an important local community resource, and I am worried that it will become derelict. The company replied today to my letter of 15 November—I do not know whether it knew that I was going to raise the matter in the House today—to say that it would look into the marketing of the site. I hope that it will do so quickly, so that the site can be used for housing or other amenities for the people in Rushy Mead. I know from discussions that I have had with Ross Wilmot, the leader of the city council, that he is keen to ensure that something is done about the area.
	My two final points concern national issues. The first relates to the announcement made today in a written statement by my hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration concerning the proposed changes to visitors visas. I was watching a parliamentary programme last week when I saw the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons jump up to the Dispatch Box to reply to an hon. Member who was complaining about the number of Government announcements being made to the press before they were made to Parliament. She replied that she had no examples of that happening, at which Mr. Speaker said that he had a number of examples. Here is yet another example. All over the weekend those proposals were trailed in the national newspapers, and they were trailed yesterday on television, yet we have only just had the written statement.
	I believe that there are some good things in these proposals, but I am a bit concerned about the proposal to introduce a bond system. We tried it seven years ago and it was not particularly successful, though I appreciate that the emphasis will now be on the sponsor in this country rather than the applicant abroad. That is welcome, but my problem, which other Members will share, is that where many people are coming to a very big wedding—as in Leicester, where 20 or more relatives often attend them every weekend—how is the sponsor going to be able to pay for 20 bonds, if they are to be set at the level of £1,000 each? That is a lot of money.
	Although I welcome the fact that the Minister for Borders and Immigration has sought so carefully to ensure that there is proper discussion and debate about these issues—the consultation period will last three months—I worry about one or two aspects of the bond system. I hope that the Government will listen to local communities and to hon. Members who have large immigration case loads and hear what they have to say about their experiences. I do not support the removal of the right of appeal. I think that a robust independent judicial appeal system is vital for the success of the visa regime, but I have no particular problems with reducing the length of a tourist visa from six to three months, as three months is plenty of time to visit relatives in this country.
	My last point concerns police pay. As the Deputy Leader of the House will know, following an evidence session with the Home Secretary last week, the Home Affairs Select Committee took evidence from Jan Berry, the chairman of the Police Federation and the chief constable of Nottinghamshire, Steven Green. We listened carefully to what the police had to say about the Government's approach to the issue of police pay and I am on record as saying that the Government have made a mistake in not paying the full award as recommended by the police arbitration tribunal, from 1 September. I cannot understand why that is not being done, as it is very clear from what we heard earlier today that the 2.5 per cent. is within the budget of every local police authority.
	I understand from the hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price), whom I have just met in the Tea Room—I source this piece of information—that the chief constable of Gwent in north Wales has decided to honour the agreement and intends to find a means of backdating the payment to 1 September, which I think is a very good thing to do. However, I should say that the chief constable of Nottinghamshire said that he could not do that because he did not feel that it was legally possible.
	Why are the police a special case? It is because for the last police strike, we have to go back to 1918. That is why the law was passed then, effectively preventing the police from going on strike again. They are one of a very small group of public sector workers who cannot go on strike, so if the Government go through a process of arbitration for those public sector workers, it is extremely important that they should be bound to accept the outcome.
	Those familiar with the Home Affairs Committee will know that there are very different personalities on it from the different wings of the various parties, so it is often difficult to achieve unanimity in such a short time. On this occasion, we have had only two evidence sessions, yet at 1 o'clock today the Select Committee unanimously resolved to write to the Home Secretary to ask her to meet the pay award in full. We said that we did not accept that the police were in the same position as other public sector workers, because they cannot withdraw their labour in pursuit of any pay claim. We felt that it was incumbent on the Government to honour the recommendations of the independent tribunal, and we said that this was a question of trust. We need the police to carry out their proper functions.
	Members will have received many e-mails and letters from members of the police force who are planning a very big demonstration in January next year to lobby Parliament. I believe that they are also going to Redditch to lobby the Home Secretary in her constituency. This is a problem that we do not need at the moment. The money is there and this Government have had very good relations with the police over the last 10 years. Law and order is at the very heart of our domestic agenda, and there seem to be no reasonable grounds why this claim cannot be paid. I understand and accept the Home Secretary's argument that there must be an overall pay policy, but this will not breach such a policy because the money is, as I have explained, already there.
	Let us send a very clear message that we value the work of the police. It is important not only to our law and order agenda but to our counter-terrorism agenda. We have rightly found an additional £15 million to put into counter-terrorism, so it is quite possible for the Government to honour this commitment. I realise that the Minister is not going to stand up at the Dispatch Box and announce that the settlement will be paid in full—if only that were the case! She will not say that, just as she will not say that Cheshire will not be divided or that Mr. and Mrs. Dyke's central heating will be inspected tomorrow. What I would like her to do, however, is to pass my strong message back to colleagues, especially those in the Treasury and the Prime Minister, who I hope will meet the Police Federation shortly. That would be the right thing to do at the present time. As I wish everyone a very happy Christmas, I believe that this provides an opportunity for the Home Secretary to become Mother Christmas.

Andrew Turner: On Friday, I met Mr. and Mrs. John Burrell of Godshill, who came to my advice centre with a matter of the utmost concern. The Burrells have been married for 41 years and the family has lived on the Isle of Wight for five years. Sadly, Mr. Burrell was taken ill two years ago, or thereabouts, with renal cancer. His life may be prolonged by use of the drug Sutent. Although Sutent has not yet been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, it is prescribed in many PCTs—but not on the island. Across the Solent, in Portsmouth and Southampton, and in 60 other primary care trusts up and down the country, Sutent would be prescribed for Mr. Burrell or those like him. There appears to be a real difference between PCTs in terms of treatment available. Some, such as the Isle of Wight, are inflexible and others are more flexible and appear to consider whether use of the drug is appropriate.
	The estimated cost for the initial treatment is between £4,000 and £7,000. The number of people on the Isle of Wight who may benefit from Sutent is as low as just two cases in two years, including that of Mr. Burrell. Mr. Burrell has been supported by Dr. Gabi Fritzsche, his general practitioner of Niton, and Dr. Kudingila Madhava, his consultant oncologist based at St Mary's hospital in Portsmouth. Let me quote a letter sent by Dr. Madhava to the PCT, as reported in a front page article in the  Isle of Wight County Press. Dr Madhava said:
	"As Mr. Burrell is a young patient and has been very fit until recently, he would really be an ideal candidate for this treatment. It would be unfortunate if you deprived him of this newer drug just because of lack of funding."
	But despite that plea, Mr. Burrell was rejected for Sutent by the Isle of Wight PCT—a decision confirmed by an appeal panel last week.
	Dr. Jenifer Smith, director of public health for the Isle of Wight PCT, said, and I quote:
	"Our standard practice for new drugs is to use only those which have been approved by NICE. We believe this policy is in the wider best interests of all our patients, and the public, as it ensures we prescribe medicines which are safe, effective and value for money."
	In other words, its officers simply give effect to a national policy, whereas other PCTs consider the suitability of the drug for local patients.
	The NICE policy makes it clear that local decisions are okay for medicines that have not yet been approved for national schemes, yet that does not seem to be happening on the Isle of Wight. Southampton city and Portsmouth city teaching PCTs confirm that they prescribe Sutent, judging each request on its merits, while the north-east strategic health authority approves it as the routine first and second treatment for 12 trusts. To take Dr. Madhava's words into account, it is hard to see what argument for giving the treatment to Mr. Burrell could be more compelling. The only conclusion can be that a postcode lottery is affecting the island, to the great detriment of my constituents and their families. Furthermore, NICE is delaying approval in many cases. If no scheme is approved nationally, there is a stalemate when local approval does not come through.
	Mr. Burrell is in an impossible situation. One cannot fail to be moved by his plight. I should be grateful if the Deputy Leader of the House could raise the case with the Minister concerned and ensure that an explanation for this state of affairs is provided for Mr. Burrell and his family. Ministers must also ensure that NICE evaluates new and apparently effective drugs swiftly, so that all patients can benefit from them.

Patrick McLoughlin: On the first issue, I am waiting for the Government's guidance, as opposed to regulations, because guidance helps the authorities to know which line they can take. I am waiting for the consultation to end and to see how the Government will move forward on that difficult planning issue. On the second issue, it is more about the regulations.
	One of the issues that we do not seem to talk about often these days in the House is agriculture. Agriculture is essential in my constituency. As I said, a fair deal of my constituency is covered by the Peak District national park. The problems that the beef and lamb industries face are absolutely phenomenal. In the financial year ending March 2007, the average beef producer lost between £94 and £430 per head, and the average lamb producer lost between 65p and £36 a head. It is far worse for upland farmers. There is a real crisis. Although there are some areas of the industry where it looks like the worst is over and there is some hope, the beef and lamb industries are still facing serious problems.
	I cannot remember the last time we had a debate in the House on agriculture. The Government used to provide an Adjournment debate on that subject, but I cannot remember the last occasion when the Government did that. There was an Opposition day debate on the problems faced by the farming community following the outbreak of diseases such as foot and mouth and bluetongue, but we have not had an agriculture debate in the House for some time. I urge the Deputy Leader of the House to consider that as one of the future subjects that we should talk about.
	We are fast approaching a situation where everyone will again be notified of their council tax increases. It looks like the Government are saying that they anticipate council tax going up by perhaps 4 per cent. or something similar. It is amazing how the Government are prepared to say that council tax should go up by 4 per cent., yet they set an inflation target of 2 per cent. I wonder why there is such a difference. Why do they allow councils to set their council tax increase 100 per cent. higher than their own inflation target? Many older people in our constituencies only get a 2 per cent. increase in their pension. The fact is that, over the past 10 years in Derbyshire dales, we have seen council tax increase by 91 per cent. and in Amber valley we have seen it increase by 87 per cent. That most affects those people on fixed incomes. It is the greatest cause of concern for them. For the Government to accept that council tax rises should be almost double what they anticipate inflation being is not acceptable.
	If the Minister cannot today answer the questions that I have raised, particularly on the planning issues—I accept that she has to be briefed on every subject under the sun—I hope that she will take the opportunity to raise them with the Secretary of State, and that I will get a reply in due course.

Jim Dowd: I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise a couple of matters of particular concern to my constituents, although they have wider implications across south London. If I have time, I will refer to a third matter.
	Earlier this year, I secured an Adjournment debate on the future of Network Rail services into London Bridge station following the welcome and long overdue extension of the East London line through my constituency to Crystal Palace and West Croydon. I do not intend to reprise the whole of that debate now, but I will make one point that I made then. The London borough of Lewisham has the highest proportion of residents who work outside the borough of any of the London boroughs. Therefore, the public transport links into and out of Lewisham are crucial to my constituents and others.
	I sought in that debate to get an assurance that current Network Rail services would be augmented by East London line services and that there would be no cut in the current level of service, which is already extremely overcrowded. Although everyone welcomes the extension of the East London line and the extended opportunities that that will give for changes in travel patterns, on many occasions people cannot even get on the trains that go through the stations in my constituency. The frequency does not matter if by the time they get to Honor Oak, for example, they cannot get on the train. I sought a number of assurances, which the Minister was not able to give in full. However, the Minister certainly made some welcome comments.
	Since then, the route utilisation study for south London has been concluded. Such studies are taking place throughout the country. I am sure that they are taking place in the constituencies of many Members present. The route utilisation study for south London has been published for consultation. The outline draft is before us. It is necessarily a weighty document: it is well over 200 pages, it is very technical and has numerous charts, graphs and tables. It will form the background not just for the extended East London line in 2010 but for the franchise renewal, which comes up in 2009.
	The franchise is currently held by Southern. I do not know whether it will be successful again. I do not even know whether it will tender. I suspect that it will, which will be good news for people in my constituency, because it took over from the late, lamented Connex, which had the franchise taken away from it. Services have improved markedly. As I say, there is huge pressure in my constituency on the rail services going south on the loop line into London Bridge and Victoria stations.
	The route utilisation study is not readily comprehensible to those who do not understand how railway timetabling is done. During the Adjournment debate earlier this year, I mentioned a few community groups in my constituency. I pay tribute to them again for the work that they have done in trying to interpret the implications of the options outlined in the study. However, I have concluded that the reasoning in that was at variance with my own and certainly at variance with the various undertakings and assurances that I was given by Network Rail, Southern, Transport for London and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), who is responsible for rail, and his officials. There seems to be concern in the constituency that services into London Bridge station will be reduced from eight trains to six during the rush hour and that loop services between London Bridge and Clapham Junction into Victoria will be abolished.
	I was therefore delighted to receive an e-mail from Network Rail. I will read part of it because I would like to get it on the record to reassure my constituents. It says:
	"Network Rail has some concerns about a number of factually incorrect comments about the South London RUS which are currently in circulation and which may be causing...unnecessary worry.
	Some of the issues which concern us, and which we would like to clarify are as follows:
	It is not true to state that 'the draft RUS would result in a 25 per cent. cut in existing Sydenham Line peak period services to London Bridge. The draft RUS proposals for December 2009 would in fact:
	Result in exactly the same number of trains as today from Sydenham/Forest Hill arriving at London Bridge between 0700 and 1000 on weekdays"
	and
	"Result in an increase from today in the number of trains from Anerley, Penge West, Honor Oak Park and Brockley arriving at London Bridge between 0700 and 1000 on Weekdays".
	It goes on:
	"It is not true to state that the draft RUS proposes an even greater cut in off-peak services from Sydenham to London Bridge. The draft RUS makes no comment whatever on the level of off-peak services to London Bridge. It is also not true to state that the draft RUS proposals will result in the loss of the loop line service to Clapham junction and Victoria."
	I was very heartened to receive that from Network Rail and obviously my constituents will be pleased as well. However, the proof of the pudding will be when the East London line arrives in 2010.
	The utilisation study is out for consultation and should be finalised by March. It then goes to the Office of Rail Regulation and finally to the Department for Transport. I hope that all the bodies involved will process it in exactly the way that Network Rail intends and that the East London line in 2010 will be a genuine and very welcome addition—particularly to someone who has been campaigning for the extension of the East London line for 35 years—to the area and to the people of my constituency.
	Another recent consultation, which was published only yesterday, is called "A Picture of Health" and is a joint venture by Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham primary care trusts, with the involvement of West Kent PCT. The study is looking at the acute sector within south-east London and outer west Kent. It has been augmented by Sir George Alberti, head of the national clinical advisory team. It is called, rather mistakenly in my estimation, the outer south-east London study. That is something of a misnomer, because University hospital, Lewisham is certainly not in outer London. However, it seems easier to deal with it in that way, rather than looking to the west and north to St. Thomas's and King's.
	The great advantage of the variety of proposals that the study makes is that they are clinically led. A number of them—intermediate and hospital-based home services and urgent care centres—make admirable sense and the sooner they are advanced, the better. Many of them are not new and have been suggested for many years. However, the PCT and its predecessors were unable to put a funding framework in place. I hope that urgent progress will be made.
	Many of the proposals deserve praise—as the consultation was published only yesterday, this is an early opportunity to make my views known—but some options should be ruled out immediately. Any suggestion to relocate the excellent paediatric facilities at Lewisham—a regional centre offering care of the highest quality—would be a severe mistake. There is no need to do that and, as the phrase has it, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
	Any suggestion that the accident and emergency facility at Lewisham should be downgraded or modified is completely misplaced. If it were not there, there would be nothing between St. Thomas's, King's and Farnborough to the south and Woolwich to the east. That is entirely unacceptable and would result in great dislocation. Hardly any of my constituents—hardly anyone in Lewisham—would use Woolwich and Farnborough and the pressure already on St. Thomas's and King's would simply be increased. The A and E at Lewisham is regularly busier than at King's, a hospital with three times the number of beds, and is occasionally busier than St. Thomas's. It would be an act of utmost folly to downgrade or modify it. I look forward to the consultation and hope that it will be to the benefit of everybody across south London.
	Finally, I want to refer to an internet service provider that is failing to provide. Many right hon. and hon. Members will recall Freeserve, which was the dominant provider of internet services. In the end, it was acquired by Wanadoo and then went to Orange. During that time, people kept their e-mail addresses but were provided with services by Wanadoo and then by Orange—until a few months ago. This matter only came to my attention over the weekend.
	Orange was taken over by France Telecom. I am sure that this has nothing to do with the fact that it is France Telecom, but surreptitiously and without warning long-established e-mail services are being disconnected. I am not even sure whether the company has the legal right to do that, because, effectively, it is taking people's information or data and refusing them access to it. One can still send e-mails to the address that Orange has now blocked. People send mail in all good faith, assuming it has got through, but it has not, simply because of the capricious and disgraceful actions of Orange.
	I know, as many hon. Members do, that Orange has a sophisticated lobbying organisation. There are many sessions for Members to discuss issues. I have been to a few and Orange is very generous with its hospitality; one can go out on the Terrace at its expense. Orange should take into account the fact that people have a right to be told, if nothing else. People may let Orange put them on to a new contract to screw money out of them—that is what these organisations do—but it is plain stupidity not to tell them what is going on . It should end this reprehensible behaviour as soon as possible.

Andrew Robathan: As it happens, I shall come to that issue, but I do indeed see a theme emerging.
	My constituents are concerned about police pay, like everybody else. That is not to say that policing could not be improved or reformed, but I am astonished by the Government's behaviour. The Home Secretary should change her mind even now, because doing so would be for the benefit of the police force and the country.
	The second issue is that of post offices, which has been mentioned by, among others, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin), who is sadly no longer in his place to keep me in my place. The Government have got the whole issue wrong. I used to shadow the post office portfolio. Every post office, apart from a Crown post office, is a small business, run by a small business person. Instead of treating that network as a business opportunity that could be used in many different ways, the Government have consistently—they have done so from the urban reinvention programme onwards—treated it as a problem. Frankly, they would like to get rid of it completely.
	I am fortunate in that only one post office my constituency will be closed under the latest programme. It is at Arnesby, and I know it well, as I used to live there. The village is not especially big. It has a pub, a church and a school, but it does not have a shop or great community facilities. The post office is therefore much valued. My colleagues on the Front Bench share my view that the rural post office provides a service that should be married with the business opportunity that it represents. That is not to say that none should ever be closed, but the number of rural post offices around my constituency that have closed in the past 10 years is staggering. That has been to the detriment of my constituents' lives, and I know that the same thing has happened all over the country. The Government and the Post Office need to look again at what they are doing.
	Thirdly, I want to raise the question of pensions, and especially of those private pension schemes that have gone bust. People who know Leicestershire will know that many former workers at British United Shoe Machinery were affected by the problem, so I was delighted by the Government's announcement yesterday that they intend to reimburse the pensioners involved. I applaud the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for finally making that decision, and although I have been here long enough to know that the Government are not absolutely accurate about everything that they put in the public domain, I hope that pensioners will receive 90 per cent. of the pension that they lost.
	I have two questions about the Government's actions in this matter. First, how was it that they were prepared to go to court to fight the pensioners' action groups, given that they have just about met the pensioners' demands? Secondly, how much will the deal cost? When we started arguing about this matter in the previous Parliament, we were told categorically that the burden would be huge. The Government said that reimbursing the pensioners could come to as much £15 billion, and that that was unacceptable. We did not agree, so I was puzzled yesterday to hear that the total cost would be between £2.7 billion and £2.9 billion. Both are large sums, but I understand that the Exchequer has already received £1.7 billion, as it had a claim on the pension funds when they collapsed. Therefore, the cost to the public purse is not £15 billion, but £1 billion. That is still an enormous amount, but the Government accept what most hon. Members have said for some time—that they have a moral responsibility to assist people who saved for retirement and lost their pensions through no fault of their own.
	The fourth issue that I wish raise—farming—also has local as well as national resonance. I should declare an interest, in that I have a farm, although I should also declare that I do not make any money out of it. The state of farming remains dire. There have been some improvements, such as in the price of wheat, but we all know that that will cause the cost of food to rise dramatically. Tesco has made some movement in respect of the farm-gate milk price, but the dairy sector remains in crisis.
	My constituency used to have a great many dairy farmers, but a huge number of farms have gone out of business. They have either given up farming completely, or they have left the dairy sector because they cannot make a living out of it. They are just about breaking even now, but at one stage they were producing milk at a loss—and one does not need to be a very clever business man to realise that that cannot go on for very long. We need to look at the whole question of how farming is supported. The fiasco of the single farm payment goes on and on, and the Government should be ashamed of it. Other important questions have to do with how foot and mouth disease escaped from the Pirbright facility, and whether that resulted from the cuts made by the previous Chancellor of Exchequer in the funding for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and especially for the animal hygiene service, I think, which was in overall control of the Pirbright site.
	I want especially to raise the issue of nitrate-vulnerable zones. A huge amount of money will have to be spent on installing slurry pits or bunds on every farm in the country. At best, their efficacy is dubious, but at worst they could have an unfortunate environmental impact on land that we want to improve. The House will know that the current system of single farm payments requires that land is kept in good agricultural and environmental condition—GAEC, for short. Farmers are encouraged to leave vegetation uncut, and especially to leave stubble over winter, as that is good for birds. However, the proposals for nitrate-vulnerable zones insist that stubble is ploughed over the winter so that slurry can be spread on the land. That is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, so the Government should look closely at the proposals and consider whether there might be better ways to reduce nitrates in ground and drinking water to improve the environment. The current proposals look like a disaster waiting to happen, and I counsel Labour Members that there will be disaster in every constituency that has farms unless there is change.
	Finally, I turn to the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans). It involves every Member from the three main parties and probably has the support of the two minority parties represented in the Chamber today. At the last election, every Member elected from one of the three main parties stood on the platform that we would hold a referendum on the EU constitution; yet notwithstanding the fact that Giscard d'Estaing, who wrote the constitution, and everybody else on the continent, says that the reform treaty is exactly the same as a constitution, the Government, aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrat running dogs and their new leader, are reneging. They say, "Oh, we didn't mean it". Politicians are told that they lack integrity. I deny that—I hope I have some integrity; indeed, almost all Members of this place have integrity and want to stand by their word. That is important. What will the British public think of those who stand on a manifesto that states, "We will have a referendum on the EU constitution" and then change their mind? It is not acceptable.
	I believe in parliamentary democracy and am not a great fan of referendums. However, I stood on that manifesto, and I demand that the Government stick by their promise and that the Prime Minister, who is in charge of the manifesto, sticks by his promise and that we hold a referendum. I hope that every hon. Member who stood on such a manifesto will support a referendum on the EU constitutional treaty.

Gordon Prentice: I have only one issue to raise this afternoon, but it goes to the very heart of our representative democracy. It is the issue of politicians changing their allegiance and switching parties without reference to the electorate. I know that we live in an era of big tent politics, but I hold to the traditional view that, if someone is elected to represent a particular party and then reneges on that commitment, he or she should stand down. Here at Westminster, over the years, there has been constant traffic between the two sides of the House, but those involved should stand down, resign and stand again.
	That is even more the case in the European Parliament, where there is no fiction about people being elected as individuals. There, they are elected on a party list. Of course, people's views change over the years. I have witnessed that here myself; I have seen people's views changing almost imperceptibly so that they end up with a completely different political outlook from the one that they had five or 10 years earlier. With others, however, the change can be so immediate and abrupt as to leave us gasping. I want to talk today about one such conversion.
	I want to talk about Sajjad Karim. He is a solicitor and, in 2004, he was the first British Muslim to be elected to the European Parliament. He was helped, supported and fast-tracked by his friends in the Liberal Democrat party, and he ended up in Brussels. Astonishingly, three weeks ago, he decided that he was a Conservative, changing his politics in the way that some people change their shirts. I pondered this matter, and wondered why he might have done that. I reflected on the fact that, in the internal elections in the Liberal Democrat party, Mr. Karim did not come top. The number of seats in the north-west region is also to be reduced as a consequence of the enlargement of the European Union, so cynics might say that Mr. Karim made the calculation that, under the list system in the next European parliamentary elections in 2009, he might not get elected.
	Why am I interested in this case? When he was elected in 2004, Sajjad Karim opened a huge constituency office in the shopping centre smack bang in the middle of the biggest town in my constituency, with the Liberal Democrat logo along the top. It was impossible to miss that office. It has been closed for three weeks since the defection, and my prediction is that it will not reopen. It will be reopened somewhere else—perhaps in Cheshire or somewhere like that—but not in Pendle.
	I am also interested in Sajjad Karim because of what he did to my constituents, which beggars belief. He treated his employees badly and he was disloyal to his friends and colleagues in the Liberal Democrat party. I say to the Conservatives that he will be an unreliable friend to them. The Conservatives are about to select their candidates for the European elections in 2009 and it beggars belief that someone like Karim could be preferred over a lifelong Conservative who wants to represent the party in Europe.
	Karim sacked the people who worked in his constituency office and I would like to say exactly how he did it. He sacked those who worked for him by text message. This is what Karen Ashworth, the mother of one of his staff, told the local newspaper, the  Nelson Leader, a few days after the sacking:
	"While working on Monday I was horrified to learn that my daughter had been fired from her job. Her employer did not have the courtesy to tell her in person—instead, he simply sent her a text message asking her to pick up a letter from a firm of Solicitors in Nelson. It seems she was only sacked because her employer, Sajjad Karim... had decided to change his political allegiance. My daughter is not a member of any political party and had worked hard and loyally for Mr. Karim. To rub salt into the wound, when I returned home, I found a leaflet from the Conservatives behind my door, asking me to rejoice in what had happened."
	It was all carefully planned.
	Astonishingly, Mr. Karim told the BBC on 26 November—just a few days after he had decided he was a Conservative—that this was not a "snapshot" decision, as he had been thinking about it for some time. I looked at his website, because I knew that he was a great blogger who had been blogging for years, and found that he was very critical of the Conservatives and the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). It now transpires that he expects the world to believe that he did not write those blogs, which have now been wiped clean from cyberspace. Apparently, it was a disloyal employee who wrote the blogs on his behalf and he had to discipline and sack that employee for inventing them. That is amazing and literally incredible, in the dictionary definition of the word.
	As I said, Karim let down his friends in the Liberal Democrat party. Tony Greaves, a councillor in Pendle and a Liberal Democrat peer in Westminster, was Karim's mentor who brought him on as he wanted to see more ethnic minority representation in the European Parliament. This is what Lord Greaves said, which I want put on the record:
	"I would say this is a very deep personal betrayal. He has done this with no discussion at all with people who thought they were friends, and I personally feel very betrayed indeed. The way he sacked his staff"—
	my constituents—
	"at his North west office in Nelson without having the courage to tell them face to face is disgraceful. He has not been taking calls from any of us for several days. If this is the way he treats friends and colleagues, the Tories are welcome to him."
	He went on to say that Mr. Karim was "despicable". Lord Greaves went off to Simonstone—or wherever Sajjad Karim lives—and I will tell the House what happened. Tony Greaves wrote:
	"The house was full of light and both cars were there. I knocked on the porch door and after a while a small shadow appeared near the door and retreated. I knocked again and no-one came to the door. So I went and stood on the pavement outside and stood looking at the house for about half a minute to see if I could see signs of movement (and so anyone looking outside could see who it was). Suddenly all the lights started going out and the house was left in darkness. I came home."
	Lord Greaves retreated to Pendle.
	Sajjad Karim has said very critical things about the Conservatives in the recent past. On human rights, he said that they were
	"stripping away...human and civil rights".
	In only June, he said about Conservative homophobia:
	"Cameron attempts to paint a glossy image of a gay friendly party in the UK while desperately trying to get into bed at European level with Poland's homophobic Law and Justice Party."
	On Kashmir, he said that the Conservatives
	"were trying to make political capital out of the human rights of the Kashmiri people".
	He has also said:
	"the Tories have adopted...an untenable position on animal welfare".
	On the environment, he said
	"The public have seen through his stunts"—
	the Leader of the Opposition's stunts—
	"and the trust of the Liberal Democrats on green issues has only increased."
	Having comprehensively slagged off the Opposition, Sajjad Karim has also been slagging off his colleagues in the European parliamentary group. He thinks that they are lazy and totally useless, and on 10 August he criticised the group's
	"poor efforts in the North West"—
	I have a lot of quotations, but I want to get them on the record. He also said:
	"Between them, the three Tory MEPs representing the North West have asked a miserly total of only 18 questions since 2004 compared to the 216 that I have tabled. And they do not fare much better when it comes to making speeches in Parliament with only 29 speeches...by the North West Tory contingent compared to my own 43 speeches."
	This is the same Sajjad Karim who is going to join the Conservative parliamentary group. Finally, he left by giving a good kicking to the people who had supported him loyally for 18 years, saying:
	"I am afraid that the Liberal Democrats have lost their way and are no longer a serious force in politics. I am here to serve the people of the North West and I think I can only do that now as a Conservative."
	I think that Sajjad Karim is a complete charlatan.

Mark Lancaster: It is a pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker, to have caught your eye and to have an opportunity to raise a few constituency matters.
	This year marks the 40th anniversary of the birth of the new city of Milton Keynes. We have had a tremendous year of celebrations, culminating some two weeks ago in the visit of Her Majesty the Queen, during which she opened the magnificent new MK Dons stadium, which is a tribute to the hard work of the Winkelman family. Let me start, however, by paying tribute to John Moffoot, the unsung hero at Milton Keynes council, who organised that visit.
	Milton Keynes faces many challenges, but the majority of them seem to stem from the Government's desire to force the expansion of the city on its residents. Personally, I have no great problem with the expansion of Milton Keynes; however, I strongly feel that it should be a local decision. For a community to be truly sustainable, it must have the support of local people, and much of the expansion does not. Scant lip service has been paid to the views of local people by the unelected and unaccountable quango, Milton Keynes Partnership, in imposing its will. I have been campaigning for four years now for "I before E"—infrastructure before expansion. If we are to expand in Milton Keynes, it is vital that we provide the infrastructure first. Many of the comments I shall make today are based on the premise that, unfortunately, the Government are simply not providing that infrastructure.
	I start on the subject of schools and the desperate news that has been given to Milton Keynes in recent weeks that the Government will massively cut our basic needs allocation for building new schools. That allocation is very much a basic need: it is for the provision of new schools. The cut will result in a shortfall of some £64.5 million over the next three years for our new schools. Already we have identified that we need 15 new schools over the next few years to accommodate the increase in pupil numbers that the expansion will bring. That is one new primary school every year. Let us take as an example Gifford Park, a primary school in my constituency that knows that locally it will have 476 new dwellings, yet because of the cut it will probably not get an extension.
	We will also need five new secondary schools over the next few years to accommodate the increase in pupil numbers. Oakgrove is a marvellous new school in Middleton in my constituency. It has already had two phases of extension and is waiting for the third. However, it now has no idea whether it will get the money to extend.
	I wonder whether the Minister can offer any advice to my constituents: given that the funding has been cut—some £64.5 million—where exactly does she suggest that my parents send their schoolchildren? At best, we will see kids bussed around Milton Keynes, as we have seen for several years previously. What exactly are we going to do—and what exactly are the Government going to do to make sure that there is no such shortfall?
	I turn to another theme affecting my constituency, and in doing so I want to add a few points to those made in early-day motion 317, on the Open university, which is in my name and has been signed by some 210 Members of this House. There are many flourishing businesses in my constituency bringing employment to the area, but one stands out for the scale, quality and uniqueness of its contribution. One of the first coups of the founding fathers of the new town of Milton Keynes was to secure a very special university within its boundaries.
	Milton Keynes attracted the fledgling Open university to occupy a major site near the village. Many felt that this revolutionary institution, which harnessed technology to deliver higher education at a distance, simply would not survive. They did not believe that it was possible to enable students to study in their own time, away from the life of a traditional campus, and to graduate on equal terms with students from the best traditional universities. To borrow a cliché, the rest, of course, is history.
	I am happy to say that some 38 years later, the Open university is not only one of Milton Keynes's biggest success stories, with more than 200,000 students studying every year. It is one of the UK's best success stories and is emulated worldwide—for example, in the middle east, where its staff helped to set up, and provided the teaching materials for, the Arab OU, which already has 30,000 students. Recently, the Open university has started talking to the Government of China about exploring the benefits of collaboration on open and distance learning in order to meet the huge growth in demand for higher education that China's economy requires.
	In Milton Keynes, the OU has played a major role in helping to develop the cultural, scientific and social life of the area. It is an exemplary citizen—a founder member of the Community Foundation, and of the local theatre and art gallery. More than 400 of its staff still serve on school governing bodies or work as volunteers in community organisations and local charities. From next January, the whole university will be involved in fundraising events for the Prince's Trust.
	The OU runs a microwave link to local schools in Milton Keynes, enabling them to access a wider curriculum and to link with schools all over the world. It has supported dozens of local schools in setting up and running their own local history projects, in order to give parents the chance to acquire IT skills alongside their children. It has supported Bletchley Park in preserving its computers and cryptographic history, and in making it accessible to the world.
	Far beyond Milton Keynes, the Open university has served as a beacon in bringing education to ever-greater numbers of people. It led the world in harnessing the widest possible range of assistive technologies to enable people with disabilities to study on an equal platform with their peers. From its earliest experiments using the latest technology to take education right into people's lives via their TV sets, it has continued to pioneer ways of reaching ever more people in ever more places using the full power of the digital age.
	Let me give just a couple of examples. In 2007, the OU's audience includes new migrants in London developing language skills, alongside studying for OU qualifications in health and social care; naval pilots studying for an OU foundation degree in military aviation, alongside their flying training; and upwards of 125,000 teachers in Uganda, Sudan and Nigeria, who are using the OU's learning materials. The OU has rightly been the recipient of a Queen's award for export achievement.
	One of the biggest challenges facing the UK economy is addressing the IT skills gap. That is not just because the IT sector is booming, but because all business areas are now leveraging competitive advantage by adding value through IT. More than 70,000 of the jobs advertised in the UK now have an IT component, and the only way to address the gap between the supply of, and demand for, people with appropriate IT and business skills is to upskill and re-skill those already in work. The OU is a major contributor in this arena nationally, allowing people to dip in and update their IT and business skills in line with their job requirements, without the need physically to attend a classroom. Every year, more than 30,000 computing, IT and business course places are taken up by part-time OU students.
	The Open university is also a centre for space and other such research. Technology developed for space missions could soon be exploited to provide a cost-effective, rapid and accurate tool for diagnosing tuberculosis. In sub-Saharan Africa, TB, combined with AIDS, is the major killer. The OU is exploring using that same technology to identify the signature of the TB bacterium, and to provide accurate and rapid diagnosis of TB without the need for a specialist laboratory.
	The Open university has achieved all that without any compromise on quality. Since the introduction of the teaching quality index in 2005, the OU has topped the overall student satisfaction ratings three times in a row. Under the previous system, it was in the top 5 per cent. of universities for teaching quality. It is a truly remarkable institution and a great British success.

Mark Lancaster: My hon. Friend makes a valuable point and I know that he has been a champion of that worthy cause. I would be delighted to pick up that issue, alongside him and other hon. Members.
	My final point is on another valuable piece of infrastructure in Milton Keynes, but one that is often overlooked. We are fortunate in having the Grand Union canal flowing through Milton Keynes. There has been much debate in the House recently about the potential cuts for British Waterways that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs propose. Some say that the figure will be as much as £30 million, but the biggest impact in my constituency will be on the building of the new Milton Keynes to Bedford extension of the canal, for which there is great support. The extension will finally link the two towns and be the first new canal in nearly 100 years. I pay tribute to John Bint who has been one of the key people in pushing that scheme. It will provide a valuable asset for my area, a green lung and a facility that the growing population will be able to use. However, amid the growing uncertainty over funding for British Waterways it looks increasingly unlikely that the project will get off the ground. It enjoys cross-party support in the town and I simply ask the Minister to take note of my concerns and do what she can to push that valuable project ahead.

Anne Milton: My time is constrained, so in case I run out, I start by wishing you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the other Deputy Speakers, Mr. Speaker, his staff and indeed all the staff of the House, who go to great lengths to make our lives easier and our business run smoothly, a happy Christmas and good fortunes in the new year.
	I should like to raise four issues, if only briefly: the south-east plan, post offices, my local hospital and, following on from that, the funding formulae that local councils in my area are receiving from the Government. Before I do so, however, I should like to commend the idea proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), who is no longer in his place, of giving medals to those in the Women's Land Army. To follow on from the points that the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) made, my mother was a welfare officer in the land army. She was involved in a demonstration that the girls from the land army held down the Mall at the end of the war, when they stripped down to their bras and pants in protest at not receiving demob suits. That generation of women did a great deal to further the cause of the women who sit in the House. We should pay them a significant tribute for their guts and their determination to stand up and fight for what they wanted.
	On the current south-east plan, however, my constituency is geographically constrained, being on a floodplain and surrounded by green belt, with protected downland to the south-east and south-west, and rural villages stretching down to the Sussex border. Guildford borough council has met its housing targets, but the town, with its narrow and constricted roads, is increasingly congested, with the study of the likely transport impact of housing numbers set out in the draft south-east plan predicting unacceptable traffic congestion. We are also conscious of other infrastructure deficiencies in water and sewerage, as well as increasing problems with flooding.
	The inspectors' panel report on the south-east plan, which is now being considered by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, increased the housing numbers for Guildford by one third, or nearly 2,000 additional houses. It also diminished the requirement for infrastructure to accompany new development, changing the need in the draft plan for development to be "contingent" on the provision of infrastructure to the "timely provision of infrastructure", which provides more scope for inadequate, inferior development without the necessary facilities and amenities.
	It seems that Guildford was singled out for a disproportionate increase in housing because, interestingly, it is described as a "regional hub", a term that had metamorphosed from the description "regional transport hub", which many residents in my constituency found somewhat surprising. Yes, Guildford has a railway station and a bus service of sorts, but it is a long way from having the comprehensive public transport system that the term might suggest.
	If Guildford is to meet the new housing targets as well as intensifying development in the urban area, it will almost certainly have to expand into the green belt to the north of the town. The effects of incremental development are already being felt in north Guildford, particularly in areas such as Stoughton, which suffers significantly from the lack of infrastructure. The threats to Waverley, in the south of my constituency, are similar. The tensions between house building, inadequate infrastructure and the use of green belts continue.
	Guildford is further concerned about uncertainty over the treatment of housing windfall sites. Historically, Guildford has provided much of its development on such relatively small sites, as has Waverley, and there is no sign that they will arise less frequently in future. However, the Government's new planning policy statement 3 does not want those sites taken into account in the housing planning numbers, except with laborious justification. The south-east plan inspectors were more realistic. Clarification of the Government's attitude on windfall sites is much needed, so I would appreciate it if the Deputy Leader of House could address that or get an answer on it for me.
	Both Waverly and Guildford are alarmed at the scale of development proposed in the inspectors' panel report, which is likely to undermine the character of the area on which its economic success is founded. Its residents feel that the inspectors underestimated the constraints on development and that their proposals will lead to huge and unavoidable congestion, as well as a deterioration in the quality of life of all our residents through the inadequacy of infrastructure. There will also be a significant impact on the local, and indeed the national economy. It would be nice to have some clarification. A recent letter from the relevant Minister says that he will
	"continue to protect robustly the land designated as Green Belt."
	However, there is clearly a conflict, as is shown by the inspectors' report.
	Many Members mentioned post offices. My constituency, which is heading towards a consultation at the end of January, is in the same position as many others, and there is considerable concern locally. Our post offices are our lifeblood—the social glue that holds our communities together. In Guildford, that applies not only to the rural areas but to the communities that sit outside the town centre. We often hear about the impact that closures will have on elderly, more vulnerable and disabled people, but it is important to remember that in my area they will also have a significant impact on small businesses, including mail order companies, many of which operate from small premises, sometimes from home, and rely heavily on their local post offices. Although Guildford town does not look far away on the map, getting there is a significant consideration in terms of loss of time.
	The next matter that I want to mention is my local hospital trust. I was delighted this year when Surrey primary care trust acknowledged all the local concerns about cutting services at the trust. We are now continuing with a three-trust option in west Surrey, with some improved services at Royal Surrey County hospital. There are proposals to merge Frimley Park and St. Peter's hospitals, but they are at an early stage. Part of that success was down to the cross-party, cross-community campaign that we fought. I pay particular tribute to Professor Chris Marks, who headed up the campaign in a clearly independent and robust manner. However, to secure the hospital's future, it is important that it gains foundation status. Indeed, the Government agree. In the online document, "Achieving balance in the NHS", they say that they are
	"committed to offering all NHS Trusts the opportunity to apply to attain Foundation Trust status by 2008."
	That is clearly what they want hospital trusts to do, but on the road to that end, someone, somewhere is blocking the application. Royal Surrey County is one of the best-performing trusts in the country. It is financially secure and achieving financial balance, it has some of the best mortality rates in the country, and accident and emergency waiting times are among the best in the country, yet the primary care trust or the strategic health authority—it is not entirely clear which—is trying to block the application. It is vital that Royal Surrey County gets foundation status. That would also be an opportunity for the Government to demonstrate just how much a hospital trust can achieve. I have asked the Minister concerned to meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), and I look forward to a positive outcome from that request.
	The last subject that I should like to mention is local government settlements, which have been grim in Guildford and Waverley, as throughout Surrey, with a 1 per cent. increase in local government funding, 0.3 per cent. going to Surrey county council, and an equally bad settlement for the police under a very unsympathetic funding formula. Surrey is the single biggest financial contributor to the Government's coffers and I am afraid that I, like many residents, am getting sick and tired of our being used as a cash cow. Local residents expect their local councils to provide good services, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so when the Government are starving them of much-needed cash. People in Guildford, in Waverley and across Surrey feel that they are being punished by central Government. That is not the only cut. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning), who is not in her place at the moment, my local theatre, the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford, has just discovered that it is to lose its Arts Council funding. It is early days, but there is no doubt that the theatre is under significant threat. Middle England pays and middle England gets punished.
	I am sorry to sound angry because I enjoy the company of the Minister. We have a little bit of a laugh in the corridors. I am sorry to spoil the rather light mood of the House today, but south-east Surrey in particular and my constituency are a significant contributor to this Government: we are net contributors, I believe, to the tune of £5.5 billion. It is easy for the Government to dismiss us as not of any political significance, but they would be unwise to dismiss us as not of any financial significance.
	When my hon. Friends raise issues that are important to our constituents, the Government all too readily dismiss our concerns and talk about how wonderful everything is under their administration. We have been rather flattered by the cries recently of, "What would you do?" I think that the Government should start to listen to the voice of ordinary people who are raising the money that the Government are spending. They should rise to the real challenges of Government and trust local people. Stop the Stalinist top-down dictatorial approach that is making my residents so angry. The Government may have found the past four months slightly sticky, but I assure them that things can get a lot worse.

Helen Goodman: It is nice to be able to respond to an afternoon of debate that has been so lively and marked by so many contributions. The first was of course the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). She made a powerful speech in which she was strongly critical of the local government reorganisation in Cheshire. I am sure that her arguments will be heard beyond this Chamber. It was interesting that my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) disagreed with much of what she said. In County Durham, we have gone through a similar reorganisation recently and I know that such processes can raise strong feelings, because the way in which local government is organised has an impact on public service delivery.
	The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) spoke initially about rural services and, in particular, his concern about post office closures. His points about the significance of the post office were echoed not only by those with rural constituencies, but others. They included my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac), the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin), the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). All were concerned by post office closures and the method of consultation on those closures. I will certainly draw that to the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs.
	The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine went on to talk about the importance of broadband extension, especially for rural communities. I will draw his points on that issue to the attention of colleagues in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. He talked about the switchover from analogue to digital television, but I am afraid that he went way beyond my understanding in the description of the technology. I think that he was saying that support for vulnerable groups needs to have a longer lead-in, especially for people who are blind or dyslexic. I will draw that point to the attention of Ministers in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
	The hon. Gentleman went on to make a complaint about the level of the winter fuel payment, which I did not think was wholly justified, given the high expenditure that the Government have put into Warm Front of some £800 million, benefiting 1.6 million people. That needs to be taken into account when considering fuel poverty, which has become much less prevalent in the last 10 years. He also talked about North sea oil and gas and expressed particular concern about future development. He said that for a long time the Treasury had taken a short-term view of it. In a former life, I was the civil servant on the North sea desk, so his suggestion that that was a longstanding problem made me rather uncomfortable. In any case, I do not think that it is a problem now.
	Finally, the hon. Gentleman made the suggestion that the Leader of the House should announce business two weeks ahead. Sometimes we do announce business more than one week ahead, but I will take his suggestion away and we will consider it.

Helen Goodman: Of course I will report to the Home Office what hon. Members have said. The point that I was making to the hon. Member for Southend, West is that the situation is not one of doom and gloom; crime is down in this country.
	The hon. Member for Southend, West also talked about the seriousness of liver disease. I can only assume that unlike the rest of the country, he has not recently heard the public health Minister talking about the dangers of drinking too much alcohol. I hope that he is aware of the fact that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has undertaken a further review of Remploy factories and has reprieved many of them. I am sorry if the one in his constituency is not among them.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac), an extremely hard-working Member of Parliament, demonstrated in her speech that she understands and cares about her constituents. She spoke about the Post Office and police pay, but mostly about the fire stations in Waltham and Immingham. She was concerned by proposals to downgrade the fire stations. She pointed out that good fire stations are particularly important because of the heavy industry nearby. I will draw her remarks to the attention of the Department for Communities and Local Government.
	The hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) spoke about the financial effectiveness of the London borough of Havering. She felt that Havering has been treated unfairly by the Department for Communities and Local Government in respect of the application of the grant formula. I am sure that Havering has had its proper allocation according to the formula. I am quite sure that there is in no sense any campaign against Havering, but I will draw her remarks to the attention of the DCLG, and I will draw her concern about postcodes to the attention of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
	The hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton) told us a story about her mother taking her clothes off in the Mall when she was a member of the land army. I can only say that the hon. Lady is obviously a chip off the old block—although I hope that she is not going to do that in the Chamber now. She spoke of her concerns about overdevelopment in her constituency. I understand that the matter is fraught, since my mother-in-law is one of her constituents. Nevertheless, I remind the hon. Lady that 10 years ago the amount of development on brownfield sites was 56 per cent., and it is now up to74 per cent.
	The hon. Lady also spoke about her local hospital trust and said how much she wanted to see her local hospital become a foundation trust. She has written to the Department of Health to seek a meeting. We will follow that up on her behalf. She, too, was concerned about the local authority grant settlement in Surrey. Local authority grant settlements are the result of a sort of Heath Robinson formula that takes account of not only income, of which she made much, but needs.
	The hon. Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson) spoke about children with special needs at the Sun club in his constituency. He raised the issue of gaps in provision once children reach 16 or 18. He was pointing to the important contribution that the voluntary sector can make in supporting those families. He told the House an alarming story about the death by drowning of a young man, Tyson Brown. That sounded very serious, and I will pass those concerns on to the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. Finally, the hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) gave a typically polished and witty performance.
	I hope that people will be able to get new jobs. The closure programme is phased over some time, and there is a partnership of the County Durham Development Company, the local skills council and the local authority that will provide training for people.
	I would not want people to think that that was the total sum of my constituency. It is an extremely nice place to spend Christmas, whether that involves joining in with traditional carols played by brass bands at one end of the constituency or going for walks in the area of outstanding natural beauty at the other. I wish all hon. Members a happy Christmas. I hope that they will have as pleasant and restful a time as I intend to. I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the other Deputy Speakers, Mr. Speaker and all staff who work for us in the Palace of Westminster for everything that you and they have done for us in the past year.

Keith Vaz: I too have a petition relating to post office closures, to which I referred in my speech earlier. I am pleased to see the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden) on the Front Bench, because I have invited him to visit Leicester over the recess, as Wolverhampton is very close to my constituency. This is the petition of Mr. Shah of Willowbrook Road and Bushby Road post office, which is due to close. I accepted the petition last Friday from a lot of elderly people, lone parents and others who will really miss the post office. I hope that it can remain open, and I hope that the Minister will be able to visit my constituency over the recess.
	The Petition of Mr Shah and others,
	Declares that Willowbrook Road Post Office plays an important role in the survival of the local community, and that its closure would bring about further deprivation to an already disadvantaged community.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Minister of State for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs to make arrangements to ensure that the proposed closure of the Willowbrook Road Post Office does not go ahead
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000097]

Mark Todd: This brief debate will focus on a tragic death, one critical error and a series of other errors and misjudgments that contributed to a lady's death. I speak of Mrs. Beryl Brazier, who lived in my constituency for some considerable time. She moved house, and I will deal with the implications of her doing so.
	Let me go through the sequence of events. Mrs. Brazier opened a credit account with GE Capital bank in 1998. She managed it perfectly well until she moved house in 2005, when she had arrears of about £500. She did not move far—just to another home in the Swadlincote urban area. GE Capital sought to trace her, using a tracing company, Westcot credit services, which subcontracted the task to another company, DataTrace. That company successfully traced her and spoke to her on the phone. She was perfectly amicable and provided all the details requested.
	At the same time, the company was tracing a number of other debtors, including a Mr. Noorullah, but it failed to provide a tracing address for him. In preparing the tracing report going back to Westcot credit services, it used a formatted document in which Mr. Noorullah's and Mrs. Brazier's data, which included her telephone number, were transposed. Thus Mr. Noorullah was reported as living at Mrs. Brazier's address. GE Capital reported this address for Mr. Noorullah to Experian, the national credit reference agency, as a live address. It continued to pursue Mr. Noorullah's address, because it had a debt to recover from him as well. The letter was returned. The address was queried with Westcot, but Westcot did not pass the query back to the originator of the research, DataTrace, and there is no record of exactly how it attempted to check the address. It seems unlikely that the phone contact provided was actually used.
	Westcot reported back to GE Capital that Mr. Noorullah was no longer at that address; it provided no more information than that. Curiously enough, and possibly because there is no evidence that Mrs. Brazier was anything other than an honest woman and may have provided forwarding information, GE Capital had by then received notification of Mrs. Brazier's correct address, which was held on the system. GE Capital then updated the Experian database for Mr. Noorullah with a "Gone away" marker, indicating that that address was unreliable. It then decided for its own business reasons to sell on Mr. Noorullah's debt to a company called Aktiv Kapital, which contracted another company, Thames Credit, to purse the debt. For reasons that are not entirely clear, although GE Capital now knew Mrs. Brazier's correct address, it seemed not to have pursued her for her own debt.
	It appears that Thames Credit sourced the address for Mr. Noorullah from Experian. That should have meant that the address provided was indicated as not being reliable; as I have explained, it would have had a "Gone away" marker on it. Thames Credit or Aktiv Kapital appear to have held other debts for Mr. Noorullah, which were combined with the one owed to GE Capital to produce a sum in excess of £15,000. Letters addressed to Mr. Noorullah were sent to Mrs. Brazier's address. They were initially returned, just as earlier correspondence from GE Capital was returned as "Not known at this address", as hon. Members will recall. However, they continued to arrive.
	Mrs. Brazier then visited the local citizens advice bureau in Swadlincote, on 23 February 2006, with a family member. The CAB asserts that it rang Thames Credit to say that Mr. Noorullah did not live at Mrs. Brazier's address. Although the CAB has provided convincing detail of the call, describing the person answering it and the conversation that followed, Thames Credit claims to have no record of such a call.
	Mrs. Brazier's daughter reported that the visit to the citizens advice bureau had cheered Mrs. Brazier up considerably. She had become anxious about the correspondence arriving at her address and wanted the matter resolved. Indeed, some of the correspondence, to which I shall turn shortly, was quite threatening in tone and was causing her considerable anxiety. She was therefore much happier when the CAB said that it had spoken to Thames Credit and that the letters would stop coming as a result. But the letters did not stop coming; they continued to arrive and, in fact, became rather more aggressive, referring to field agents arriving at her home unannounced. That led Mrs. Brazier to lock herself in, even when with family members.
	On 3 April, after another letter had been received, Mrs. Brazier telephoned Thames Credit and said that she had lived in her home for two years and did not know Mr. Noorullah. However, she had been receiving letters to him and felt that she should make a payment. She would send £600. In spite of the fact that she said otherwise, the negotiator apparently assumed that she did know Mr. Noorullah. A payment of £500 was duly received by Thames Credit and banked. The cheque was accompanied by a note, clearly from Mrs. Brazier, saying that she would forward £50 a week towards the debt. Her life savings before that withdrawal were around £1,000, so she had withdrawn half her life savings to make payments towards a debt incurred by another.
	On 6 April, Mrs. Brazier's body was found in a local pond. Further letters then arrived at her address and were of course found by her family members, including one that asserted:
	"through public databases it has been confirmed that Mr. Noorullah is living at the address shown on this letter".
	There was also a letter to Mr. Noorullah that acknowledged receipt of the £500, but which made no reference to Mrs. Brazier's having been the agent of the payment.
	An inquest was held into Mrs. Brazier's death, the main hearing being in September 2007. Attending were representatives of all the companies involved, except for Aktiv Kapital and Thames Credit. The companies attending were cross-examined, and in an adjournment the deputy coroner conducting the inquest expressed the view that Thames Credit should have been asked to attend, to answer questions on its role. He felt that that was the right thing to do, bearing in mind the direction in which the evidence was turning in the inquest. The family, perfectly understandably, declined an adjournment. They were anxious to bring the terrible episode to an end and bring closure to an appalling experience.
	I have a number of concerns and queries about what happened. First, I accept that companies involved in the business of collecting debt have to deal with people who may attempt to deceive and mislead, and that mechanisms that assume the integrity of those sought are probably unrealistic. However, this case highlights how reasonable approaches to handling data, maintaining its quality, verifying information and dealing with potentially vulnerable people are readily neglected. In several areas, companies involved in the case appear to have followed neither the voluntary code of their own industry nor the Office of Fair Trading guidance.
	First, let me turn to the guidance given by the Credit Services Association, the industry's own body. It says, first, that a member should
	"take all possible steps to verify that the person being pursued is in fact the debtor".
	Thames Credit appears to have used Experian data carrying a "Gone away" marker, unless it is claimed that that information was not passed on by Experian, in which case Experian are partly at fault. However, Experian's terms and conditions in selling data to a third party make it clear that the data offered is
	"not intended to be used as the sole basis for any business decision",
	and the client—in this case, Thames Credit—agrees to take reasonable steps to confirm the identity of a debtor before taking any action to recover the relevant debt where a home address has not been provided. In Thames Credit's submission to the coroner, it indicates no use of any other source than Experian, and it asserts through its solicitor that
	"the overall accuracy of such data-matching is in the region of 98 per cent. and therefore high".
	However, that is not the view of people working in the industry, who regard Experian as providing data that is a first point of call for someone seeking to trace a debtor, and not as a desperately reliable source of where that person is.
	As my story reveals, it had already been identified that Mr. Noorullah no longer lived at that address, if he ever had—and of course he had not. Indeed, one source from the industry has told me that reckless use of unverified and completely incorrect address information by debt collection agencies is widespread. If so, this terrible case with a tragedy attached to it is merely the most extreme end of a spectrum of practices that are no doubt going on in many Members' constituencies.
	Secondly, a member
	"should offer maximum co-operation with the debtor's nominated or chosen third party".
	If the CAB did indeed contact Thames Credit, then that obligation was not complied with. Among the OFT's examples of unfair practice are
	"not ceasing collection activities whilst investigating a reasonably queried or disputed debt."
	In this case, mail was returned. It is appropriate to contrast the actions taken by GE Capital and by Thames Credit. GE Capital immediately referred the doubt back to the agent who supplied the data, who regrettably did not check their source. It seems that they ceased mailing to this address and flagged the Experian file as "Gone away". Thames Credit appears to have carried on regardless, despite returned mail and a phone call from Mrs. Brazier in which she made it clear that Mr. Noorullah did not live at her address and was unknown to her. It is also possible that it received a call from CAB. These actions were based, it seems, on one piece of data which was at best dubious.
	The OFT also makes it clear that
	"threatening to visit debtors without prior agreement",
	which happened in this case, is an unfair practice when a debt is disputed. Correspondence from Thames Credit includes just such a threat. The letter with Mrs. Brazier's handwriting on it demanding £15,670.70 threatened that should Mr. Noorullah—of course, all the letters were addressed to him—not contact the company within 14 days, field agents would call at her address to discuss repayment. I am afraid that to a 61-year-old lady that sounds like a pretty heavy threat. At that point, she called the company and spoke to it, but not much good did it do.
	One must also ask whether the negotiator involved at Thames Credit behaved reasonably. From Thames Credit's own account, Mrs. Brazier made it clear that she did not know the man in question and that he did not live at her address—yet she was offering a large payment. Surely that should have triggered concern that the company was dealing with an anxious and confused person—but the payment was banked and the correspondence continued to come.
	It should be the case, where an address is queried and it has been provided by a third party—in this case, DataTrace—that at the very least, as part of the quality control in the contract, the doubt should be referred back to the source. That was not done by Westcot earlier in the saga. Had that happened, the subsequent mismanagement of erroneous data would have been irrelevant.
	This has been a grim story, and a terrible experience Mrs. Brazier's family. They wish me to ensure that, as far as possible, such an experience should never be repeated. I share that wish. From my understanding of the issues in the case, the Office of Fair Trading should review the performance of the companies involved and their compliance with its code. The Information Commissioner should also examine their data management practices. The industry body may also wish to consider the compliance with its code in this case. The family and I stand ready to assist in all those matters, and I look forward to the Minister's reply.

Gareth Thomas: I know that my hon. Friend and indeed a number of other hon. Friends have been particularly concerned to ensure that the illegal moneylending pilots in Birmingham and Glasgow are rolled out across the country to target the loan sharks who, as he said, prey on those people who are perhaps desperate for credit. I welcome his interest. I know that he has been concerned that Sunderland should be targeted and receive support from those pilots. I can confirm that Sunderland will be covered. Obviously, we would want to receive any evidence that he or organisations operating in his constituency have about the activities of loan sharks.
	The case that my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire set out so clearly is a powerful reminder to us all in government, and indeed in the House, that the work to tackle over-indebtedness continues to be important and that we cannot afford to let up our focus on it.
	What makes this case even more shocking and tragic is that Mrs Brazier did not even owe the money that she was being hounded for. Clearly, it seems that serious errors were made in the case. As my hon. Friend rightly described, the issues highlighted by the case include complaints alleging that Westcot, DataTrace, Thames Credit and GE Capital, which all hold consumer credit licences, failed properly to investigate Mrs. Brazier's claim that she was not responsible for the debts for which she was being pursued. Mrs Brazier should not have been put in that position. That failure lies at the heart of the tragedy.
	We do of course need to establish the full facts, but somewhere along the line something has gone seriously wrong. I will seek to do what I can to make sure that appropriate action is taken. I can confirm to the House that I am writing to John Fingleton, chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading, setting out my concerns about the case. I am confident that the OFT will be looking into the circumstances surrounding the case and will take appropriate action.
	This was a preventable tragedy, it would seem. A number of measures could have been taken. For example, Mrs Brazier could have been advised to ask the Information Commissioner to intervene, in particular as to whether the processing of her data complied with the Data Protection Act 1998, which says that information held on an individual must be accurate.
	In the first instance, the Information Commissioner's Office would normally encourage the individual to write to the organisation direct and ask for its information to be corrected. If that does not happen, the ICO can investigate and take enforcement action. Given that, I will write to Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, to ask him to consider whether there has been a breach of the data protection rules and to take any action necessary.
	Even though it would seem that Mrs. Brazier was unable to prevent the pursuit of this debt, there are still serious questions to be asked about the methods used in its pursuit. It is quite right in these circumstances, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire has done, to put the spotlight on the regulation of this sector. Debt collectors are regulated, and have been for some time, under the Consumer Credit Act 1974. The OFT has a statutory duty under the Act to ensure that licences are only given to and retained by those who are fit to hold them. The OFT must, when determining whether or not a licensee is fit to hold a licence, consider any evidence that the licensee has engaged in business practices that appear to be deceitful or oppressive or otherwise unfair or improper.
	Debt collectors that hold a consumer credit licence need also to comply with specific fitness guidance that the OFT has issued covering the debt collecting sector. That guidance covers a number of practices, in particular it says that putting undue pressure on debtors is considered to be oppressive, while ignoring claims that a debt is disputed would constitute an unfair practice on the part of the debt collector.
	As was the case here, debts are often disputed by those being pursued for the debt. The OFT says that debt collection agencies should make reasonable efforts to obtain from a creditor or other agency clients sufficient information about the debt. For example, the OFT would expect the debt collection agency to have checked the accuracy of the client data details it has received from the creditor and also, where possible, obtained a copy of the original consumer credit agreement.
	If a licensed debt collection agency or creditor persistently fails to comply with the OFT's debt collection guidance or there is evidence to substantiate claims that the licence holder has engaged in unfair business practices, the OFT can ultimately revoke its licence. Since 2003, nine notices to debt collectors have been issued by the OFT that it was minded to refuse or revoke their licences.
	It would seem that the conduct involved in the case we are discussing today might constitute a failure to comply with the OFT's debt collection guidance and would consequently be relevant to a consideration of fitness to hold a consumer credit licence. In addition to the current rules relating to the debt collection sector, we are also introducing new laws that will strengthen and add flexibility to the regulatory options available to the OFT in operating the consumer credit licensing regime. The OFT has been given new powers by the Consumer Credit Act 2006, which come into force in April 2008. These will allow the OFT to place requirements on licensees to modify conduct and impose financial penalties of up to £50,000 for a failure to comply with a requirement. The OFT will also have new information-gathering powers, enabling it more effectively to monitor compliance by seeking information from licensed businesses about their activities including, for example, their debt collection practices.
	In addition, the Act also gives the OFT powers to take into account a company's competence lawfully to provide credit when assessing fitness to hold a licence. From April next year, the OFT will move to a strengthened gatekeeper role, requiring the provision of more information from businesses engaged in "high risk credit activities" such as debt collection at the application stage in order to satisfy itself that the business will be "credit competent". In some cases, it will commission an on-site visit and a report from Trading Standards.
	The OFT published consultation documents earlier this year setting out its proposed policy for applying its new licensing powers under the 2006 Act.